Audubon County Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Audubon Co., Iowa) 1885-1894, 1887-04-07
A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.
Edison's Latest Invention Puts All
Previous Ones in tho Shadc--A
story that Reads Well Even If
U.,,,t sCrno


Edison's Latest Invention Puts All
Previous Ones in tho Shadc--A
story that Reads Well Even If
It Isn't True.
A writer in The Washington Post
gives an account OF a recent interview
of most remarkable character. with
Edison, the inventor. In this inter-
view Edison Is made to describe new
machine which he calls the nutricator.
This machine, the writer says, has ac-
complished the problem of combining
the natural elements SO as to manufac-
ture wholesome food. Edison is made
to say in this interview. In ten years
my machines will be used to provide
the tables of the civilized world. Meat
will be no longer killed and vegetables
no longer grown, except by savages,
for my meathods will be SO much
cheaper" Mr.. Edison then exhibited
samples of food which he said he had
made from dirt in his cellar and from
water taken from the water pipes in
the house. The writer says:
He led me down pair of stairs into
light basement room, where a
swarthy looking man was busy about
a big machine, an iron vessel, holding
about a barrel, attached to something
that looked like hydraulic ram. The
shelves were lined with chemicals.
There was a small battery in the cor
ner from which one wire went to the
vat. A kerosene lamp burned under a
sort of re tort. That and four crooked
pipes with handles were all that was
visible.
"How is it now?" said Ed son. About
3d." replied the man. That was all.
We returned to the room above. II
shall simplify that machine one-half,"
ha remarked. yet with that can
turn out at least five tons of food of va
rious kinds every day. have already
made eighteen kinds of food. l will
tell you something if you will not say
word till say go ahead All food
comes, of course, primarily, from the
earth. The plants and fruits we eat
como from the moist ground, and the
animals we eat live on plants, or on
other animals which the plants have
kept alive. So all food comes from the
elements stored in earth. air and water.
You eat grain of wheat for instance.
The wheat is simply composed of few
simple gases and salts that last year
were lying dormant in the earth, air,
and W alter.
1T appeared TO me that the process
might be fastened; that instead of wait
ing year for nature to collect those ell
ements into an organic seed l could col
lect them in an hour, or pcrh APPS few
minutes, and arrive at the same result
by combining them organically. This
l have done. l first find out what
particular kind of food is made of.
There are sixty-tive simple elements in
nature; that is, substances which we
call elements, because we have not yet
succeeded in proving them to be COM
pound. am afraid your readers will
not generally understand what am
going to say. If you use it be careful
to take it down verbatim.
There are sixty-five elements. Car
bon is the king of these. 1t is the great
organizer. 1t is never absent from any
plant or animal organism. 1t is at the
base of almost everything 1t is the
key to my discovery, for it possesses
the peculiar capacity to form mole
cules from its own atoms. The dia-
mond is pure carbon, so are graphite
and charcoal nearly pure carbon,
though they are so different. Sugar
and starch belong to the hydrocarbons,
and / cannot understand why their
manufacture out OF earth and water
hasn't been hit on before. | form all
my meat compounds by expressing
three elements in a red-hot state to nj
trogen gas. though Iuse different fla
vors, which l get from the earth, too.
have had to bring from Yves leicester
county some argilla ceous soil not found
here.
II can make a wine, and have made
it, with New Jersey earth and water
that no man can tell from Chateau
Yquem l find that those elements
combine at the lowest temperature that
have the same atomicity-that is, the
same bonds by which they unite with
one another or with compound mole
cules. This great invention has not
been "hit on before because analytic
chemistry has received too much at
tention to the exclusion of synthetic
chemistry; men have been more de-
voted to learning thanto dong.
Lavoisier was just on the edge of it
and missed. Sir Humphrey Davy,
Liebig, and Faraday were all in sight
of 1t and suddenly turned aside. They
succeeded in making urea out of the
elements and several other inorganic
substances, but they stopped at that.
They overlooked the simplicity of this
thing.
Il think that after two or three years
New Workers, for instance, will no
longer eat meat or vegetables. They
will not sen d to the tropics for fruits
or to Europe for wines. because the
head of every family, by turning a
crank (or, perhaps, without turning a
crank, if a clock apparatus is attach
ed), can produce more delicious fruits
and wines at tenth of the cost.
"Sir Isaac New ton said: The prop
critics of all food are i'm the dirt under